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 enlarge | Author: Tony Horwitz
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $10.52
You Save: $15.48 (60%)
New (9) Used (13) Collectible (1) from $5.65
Rating:  92 reviews
Sales Rank: 253868
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6
ASIN: B0000AZW7G
Publication Date: October 2, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 a (mercifully) non-PC view of Captain Cook December 14, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
In Blue Latitudes journalist Tony Horwitz follows in the footsteps of Captain Cook, beginning with a week working as a member of the crew on board a replica of Cook's ship Endeavor. I'd always thought of Cook as this stereotypical British officer, all his buttons properly polished and looking down a very long nose at all these dreadful loincloth-clad natives. In fact, Cook was born in a pigsty, was subject in his youth to a strong Quaker influence, and worked his way up from shoveling coal to captain in the British Navy. He wrote about the aboriginal people he met with respect and admiration. His name is now a bad word all over the Pacific, but in truth Cook was the best white man they'd ever meet. This already lively narrative is made more so by Horwitz' travelling buddy Roger, one of the most cynical and funniest guys ever to walk through the pages of a book.
great history/adventure/travel book November 2, 2007
a very fun read. Reminds you how amazing Cook was...well before the he was roasted. :-)
Loved this book October 17, 2007
This is one of those books that before you even finish it, you want to share it with your friends. It's a can't-put-it-down, feel-like-you're-there good read.
 Captain Cook For A Day September 28, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well, I'm not ashamed to admit my hand just went right out and chose this book for title alone, on the strength of another travelogue I have in my library with "Blue" in the title (William Least Heat Moon's excellent Blue Highways). The boat on the cover helped; I'm a sucker for seagoing stories.
There is no denying Tony Horwitz has a gift for getting you to read; I was absorbed immediately. He makes history vastly more interesting than my Western Civ professor did in college, and presents a credible reasoning for what lead up to the death of Captain James T. Cook (that's right, sportsfans, the captain of the starship Enterprise is named after the 18th-century explorer).
Because of a lifelong passion for the sea and, apparently, Captain Cook, Horwitz embarked upon the novel notion of retracing the great man's voyages, 21st-century style. I thought this a bit of a cheat throughout the book; he VISITED the same sites, but couldn't have been said to truly get the flavour of any of the journeys. He started out promisingly, signing onto a trip for not quite a week aboard a replica of Cook's ship Endeavour by blatantly lying his way through the application, checking "yes" to questions he probably should have, in retrospect, reconsidered. A more-or-less total greenhorn, he schlepps his way through days of screwups with safety gear on that Cook's hapless sailors never enjoyed, along with far better food, no threat of corporal punishment and far less crowded conditions. Predictably, his first destination after getting off for the last time is a tavern - at least there he follows the pattern of sailors of old.
Thereafter his retracings take the form of flying to each port of call and investigating Cook's explorations on foot and by far safer land transportation (usually). The book is an excellent insight into the South Pacific of today; it seems to have no resemblance whatsoever to the South Pacific of Cook's time, which is probably the point. I have harboured a passion to visit Rarotonga all my life. After reading what the islands are like now, I think I will live with my fantasies. Things seem very shabby and dirty from Horwitz's perspective; not a paradise anymore. The one place which seems close, an island nation called Niue, is a curious mix of Christianized, very proper islanders and dubious offshore money-laundering concerns, and here Horwitz succeeds in making an unwelcome nuisance of himself by pestering the locals to show him a plant which causes them noticeable embarrassment. He doesn't take the hint when he gets the cold shoulder from almost everybody he asks about it but gets off the island, seemingly, just prior to being invited to leave.
"Blue Latitudes", as a whole, probably wouldn't supplant a recognized treatise about Captain Cook - although he does present the man's failings, it's clear he slants in favour of the explorer - but does effectively touch on almost every aspect of Cook's life and career, with intriguing insights into his dealings with native peoples, his prowess as a cartographer (some of Cook's charts were in use until the mid-1990s), and his expertise as a commander and seaman. He made three transoceanic voyages with minimal loss of life or property before possible burnout brought him to a set of unfortunate circumstances which culminated in his death at the hands of an infuriated mob of natives at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii, on February 14, 1779.
Horwitz is enthusiastic in his efforts to get information, points of view, previously-unknown sidebars, and support from a huge cast of characters, accompanied almost throughout by a droll fellow named Roger who appears to be as amenable to foregoing any investigation that doesnt involve a rum bottle as he does in giving Horwitz moral support in the out-of-the-way places they visit. Overall, this was a highly entertaining book. I know far more now about Cook and the South Pacific - both former and present day - than I did before I read it, and was left, also, with a curious sense of loss at the end. I quite enjoyed circumnavigating the globe with Horwitz and his merry crew.
Good Read, a little long near the end... June 8, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am big fan of Tony Horwitz, and this was a very good book and a lot of great information on Captain Cook. My only complaint was that the book gets a little long near the end. Roger, Tony's accomplice throughout the journey is a real character and was enjoyable throughout.
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